September 09, 2014

Many of you know my Dad was critically sick a few months
ago and spent a few weeks in the ICU.What I didn’t mention as much is that my Mom was also sick.She had a longer term illness that we thought
was in a more “stable” condition.But
last Wednesday night I got a call they were sending her to the hospital with a
fever.No big deal I thought.It was.She was immediately admitted to ICU with a high heart rate, and
extremely low blood pressure – classic symptoms of sepsis (basically an
infection in the blood stream).This is
actually exactly what put my Dad in ICU, but my Dad came through.My Mom did not.We lost her within 24 hours.I got the call that she had passed away about
6pm last Thursday.

Margaret Conley Sept 1, 1948 - Aug 28, 2014

I was in shock.I
shed a few tears, but felt numb.I felt
bad because I felt like I should have been “sadder”.I realize now it was just shock.I’d been through so much with my parents over
the last couple of years health wise, and we’d had a lot of scares, but things
always managed to turn around.Not this
time.I went home and began packing to
head to the lovely mountain town of Ruidoso, NM.

My sisters and I arrived on Friday and started talking about
arrangements.My parents are both from
KY and want to be buried there.We were
planning to make the trip to KY but soon realized my Dad could just simply not
make the trip.It is about a 21 hour
trip by car for a healthy person.It
would have taken us 3-4 days to get there and there were so many other
complications.In the end we decided on
a small funeral service in New Mexico.My
Mom will then be transported to KY for burial.

My Dad with his sister and my two cousins and sisters and niece

At first I felt guilty about giving my Mom such a small
funeral service.She deserved more.But in the end, the most important people in
her life were there and that’s all she would have wanted.Her brothers came in from KY.My Aunt (my Dad’s sister) came in from
Florida.My two cousins also came from
KY.My niece hitched a ride with my
cousins from St Louis.It was great to
be surrounded by family.I know if we’d
had it in KY we would have had more time with them, but unfortunately they were
in and out in a day or two, but it was great to see them.My other cousin Ben – one of my Mom’s brother’s
sons did the service for her and it was beautiful.

Me and my sisters and niece and my Mom's brothers

And now my sisters and I are still trying to figure out the
best solution for my Dad.He needs care
and can’t stay in New Mexico by himself, which is what he wants to do.We are working on moving him to Kansas City
which has its own challenges.He is
terminally ill and on Hospice, so we probably won’t have him with us much
longer, especially now that my Mom has gone.

I know several of you are friends with me on Facebook and
have given me words of encouragement and love.I appreciate it more than you know.As you can imagine this is an extremely difficult time for my family.If you’ve ever lost a parent then you know a
lot of what I’m going through.It’s
harder than I even thought it would be.I think back now to times when friends have lost a parent and think I
wasn’t compassionate enough or didn’t do enough. I don’t think you can ever
really understand these things until you go through them yourself.

But I want to end on a high note.My Mom was by far the most positive person I
knew.Even though she had been sick for
almost 2 years and never really felt great she never, ever complained.You usually didn’t know how bad she was or
felt.She was always looking forward to
the next day.Always knew the next day
would be better.So I know that things
are tough now, but will be better.These
are just the things in life we all have to go through at some point.I’m just going through them a little sooner
than I would have expected.But my Mom’s
strength is inside me and I will get through this.